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Thursday, August 13, 2015

Language of Confusion: -Posed, Part II

Whoo! Here we go! As you’ll recall from last week, the
suffix -pose is totally incorrect since French decided that when a Latin word ended with place, ponere, they’d just switch it to the etymologically distinct Latin word for rest, pausere, because
it almost sounds like the noun version of ponere, positionem (position, obvs).
Because, you know. Why not.

Now, on to this week’s words…

Impose first showed up in the late fourteenth century,
meaning literally “to lay (a crime, etc.) to the account of” and two centuries
later morphed to what we know it as. It comes from the Old Frenchimposer, which could mean put or
place as well as charge or accuse. The im- comes from the prefix in- and means
in (stop
me if I’m going too fast for you). -Poser is of course from the Late Latinpausare, which as I mentioned, is not
the same as ponere even though ponere’s definition (place) is the one being
used. Basically, impose is “place in” which I guess makes sense for something
like a crime that’s being laid on you. Superimpose is just impose with the
prefix super on it. It showed up in 1787 (yes, that specific). Super- as a prefix means above, over, or beyond,
so superimpose is “to lay over in”, which is pretty close to what superimposing
is.

Next, compose. It first showed up in the early fifteenth
century as compousen (I guess it wasn’t
cool enough). It comes from the Old French composer,
put together or arrange, a mix of the prefix com- (with or together)
and the not-real -poser. The Latin equivalent of the word is componere, settle, and the literal meaning of the word is to place together, which does kind of sound
like settle. We also decompose, which just comes from sticking de- in front of compose. What does that de- mean? Opposite of.
So instead of settling together, it’s settling apart. And interestingly enough,
composite has a slightly different etymology, coming from the Old French composite and
classical Latincompositus, the past participle of componere. Rather than the mix-and-match
prefix + wrong word root of the others, composite is a sensible etymology.

Transpose showed up in the late fourteenth century, and
again it was from Old French, who screwed it up. The word there was transposer, transfer or render
symbolically, and it came from the classical Latin transponere, which meant either transfer or literally to place over. In this case, trans- means over,
so this word is place over, which is pretty much what transposing is. And of
course, like composition, transposition actually comes from its Latin progenitor,
transpositionem.
It must be that s in there that screwed French (and thus English) up.

Finally today, juxtapose, which is easily the most fun of
these words to say. It showed up in 1851 while juxtaposition showed up in the mid seventeenth century.
The words are so recent that they actually come from modern, not Old, French,
where they’re just juxtaposer and juxtaposition.
Nope, didn’t even attempt to make that one original. Now, French was the
language that cobbled this word together, taking a Latin word and adding
position at the end. Because classical Latin doesn’t use J the way French does,
their word is iuxta, beside or
according to. So it’s a position
next to…juxtapose.